Masonic Education

Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076
is the Premier Lodge of Research,
but all Master Masons can join
its Correspondence Circle, as
Robert A. Gilbert explains.

Leadingtheway

The fruits of Masonic research should be
available to everyone, Masons and nonmasons
alike – and so it is with the work
of Quatuor Coronati Lodge (QC). For
almost 120 years members of the Lodge,
together with the thousands who have
joined the Correspondence Circle, have
sought to advance Masonic knowledge
and their findings have been published
for all in the Transactions of the Lodge,
Ars Quatuor Coronatorum.
Masonic research in the modern sense
had, of course, been carried on long
before the founding of QC, stimulated
by the publication in 1840 of the earliest
text of the Old Charges, the Regius MS,
and the subsequent discovery of many
other versions.
This led, in turn, to a growing demand
among Masons for accurate information on
Masonic history, philosophy and practice –
especially in relation to the vexed question
of the origins of the Craft.
From 1873 onwards public debate on this,
and on many other controversial issues, was
carried on in the columns of The Freemason,
under the guidance of the editor, the
Revd. A.F.A. Woodford, a distinguished
Masonic historian.
He encouraged a group of earnest young
‘Masonic students’ in their open arguments
and provided the intellectual environment
that gave birth to the ‘authentic’ school
of Masonic research – which relied not on
the testimony of the Bible and of ancient
historians, but on manuscript records, the
primary source for all truly academic history.
After ten years of such informal
discussions, this small group recognised
the need for more formal association and
in 1882 three of them – W.J. Hughan,
R.F. Gould and W.H. Rylands – discussed
with Woodford the prospects for a Lodge
dedicated to Masonic research.
They drew in other enthusiasts – G.W.
Speth, Walter Besant and Sir Charles Warren
– and their plans for a Lodge gradually came
to fruition, when, on 12 January 1886,
Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076 was
consecrated at Freemasons’ Hall in London,
where it still meets.
Its purpose was clear, and was set out by
Woodford in his Oration on that day: the
members proposed, by means of papers,
discussions and publications, to help forward
the important cause of Masonic study and
investigation [and] induce a more scholarly
and critical consideration of our evidences,
a greater relish for historical facts.
All well and good, but why the name
‘Quatuor Coronati’?
In the Regius MS The Mason’s craft is
described as Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, a
reference to the legend of the Quattuor
Coronati, the collective name given to two
groups of martyrs – five sculptors and four
master masons – who were put to death by
the Emperor Diocletian on the same day,
8 November, in the years 298 and 300 A.D.
For this reason the Lodge had nine
founders, holds its Installation Festival
on or near that date, and gives its
published Transactions the title of
Ars Quatuor Coronatorum.
Since 1888 there have been 116 volumes
of AQC, and it is for the contents of
these volumes that the Lodge has earned
international respect and maintained
its position as the premier Lodge of
Masonic research.
That there has always been a wide
readership for the Transactions is due to
the genius of G.W. Speth who was, from
1886 until his death in 1901, both Lodge
secretary and editor of AQC. Within a year
of the Lodge’s Consecration the members
resolved, on Speth’s motion, ‘to form a
Literary Society, under the guidance and
protection of the Lodge’; and so was born
the Quatuor Coronati Correspondence
Circle. By the end of 1888 there were
63 corporate members and 406 individual
brethren; ten years later membership was
2,677, while today it stands at 6,670.
In the early years Correspondence Circle
members played a vital role: they ensured
increasing numbers at Lodge meetings, which
had initially suffered from embarrassingly
low attendance.
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G W Speth, a founder and the
first secretary of Quatuor
Coronati Lodge